


The Contract

by The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Kink Meme, happyish ending, no really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2013-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-27 20:50:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting/pseuds/The_Girl_Who_Got_Tired_of_Waiting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack's Sister makes a contract, wishing to live those vital last days again, to save Jack from the ice. It doesn't make a difference. Jack dies in any scenario. </p>
<p>(Based on a prompt from the ROTG kink meme)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Contract

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a prompt on the kink meme and written for my friend, Jake's birthday. The Jack Frost to my Toothiana.

She was so tired. No, tired didn’t come close. The exhaustion she felt transcended the physical. It surpassed even the possible.

“Would you like to try again?”

There it was, that voice, the one she had once considered an ally, her sole companion on the task, the mission, she faced. She would have thought it was mocking her, if she didn’t already know that its owner was alien to all human emotions.

Even Triumph.

She raised her head a few inches from where it rested on her brother’s chest. She could already hear his heartbeat fading. Her gaze found the creature, unmistakable, even white against the winter of the forest. Still she found that creature.

It was the eyes, she thought, weakly. She could always find the eyes.

“Will it make any difference?” She asked. The creature didn’t answer. It only stared at her with that same, unaffected look upon its face. She already knew the answer. Breath left her in a single, long sigh.

“I’ve tried so hard, and for so long.” She whispered, unable to even shout her anger out. “And I’ve tried so many different ways.”

Indeed she had. That first time, she’d thought all she had to do was stop the ice from cracking, stop Jack from stepping foot on it. She had been so wrong. Death had found her and her brother anyway. Again and again. It had stalked them through countless scenarios, endless repeats of the same few days.

Each time it caught up with them with a new twist, a new turn of fate. All with the same outcome.

Icicle to the head. Freezing to death in the snow. Falling from a sled.

She had seen her brother die again and again and there was nothing she could do.

Her brother’s life ended here all the same. Just like the first time. Just like now.

She’d thought that she could maybe appease fate, offer herself to the ice instead of Jack. She hadn’t realised that, of course, Jack would dive in after her.

They always saved each other. Or at least, they always tried.

He had saved her, but even now the cold was claiming him. Death would come to him regardless, even if she had the strength to try again.

She looked away from the creature that had taken her wish – to live that day again, to have her chance to save Jack from the lake – and had made it into a contract. It just hadn’t factored in her chance becoming more than that. A chance to save him from one ending, but not from the inevitable, definite end.

Now she looked upon her soul gem, attached by a ribbon to her wrist. It was starting to be covered in the first flakes of a new snow fall. It always snowed at the point where she failed. Always. The gem had once shined the brightest white she had ever seen.

How fitting, for a winter magical girl. How fitting now, for a winter witch.

Already she could see its core clouding, could feel her own heart darkening with despair. She could already feel herself becoming what Kyubey had always known she would be.

~  
 _Pia_

_Witch of winter. In a realm without joy, only sorrow. In a realm of driving cold, and cracks in the ice, in the frozen water that might, once, have been tears-_

~

A hand closed around hers. It gripped her with a shock so huge it pulled her back, stalling the shadows creeping across the gem, across her soul. Jack had opened his eyes, and was using what remained of his strength to look at his sister.

“I saved you.” He coughed out, raising one hand towards her face, strength failing before he could reach her. She lowered her head, making it easier for him to stroke her hair.

“I saved you.” He said again, and she nodded. “But I think,” he stopped to take a deep, shuddering breath. “I think you’ve been saving _me_ for a lot longer, haven’t you?”

And for no other reason than this was her final chance, because he was dying and with him, what remained of her was dying too, she told the truth. She nodded.

“How many times?”

She shrugged, a gentle roll of her shoulders that hurt all the same.

How many times had she tried? How many times had they lived those precious few days? Enough to total months, easily. Years, maybe. A lifetime? Had she, inadvertently, lived out in days the years she and Jack should have had together?

Jack’s head lolled to one side and for a second she thought he had gone, before realising he was looking straight at Kyubey.

“It’s because of you, isn’t it?” the little creature considered him, quietly, before answering.

“I granted her wish. Really, everything else was as much her as it was me.”

Jack lay still, breathing raggedly, absorbing this information. After what could have been an eternity, he set his expression into a determined glare and spoke again.

“I want to make a wish with you.”

Hearing this, her heart lurched into her mouth, bringing her voice with it.

“NO!” she screamed with a force she didn’t know she still had. “Jack, no, it won’t be like you think. It’ll twist your wish. It knows how to turn it against you. It’s done this so many times, it will-“ but he was looking at her again, and that look killed any argument she had.

“How many times have you done this?” he asked, repeating his words from earlier. But this time she knew he wasn’t addressing her. “To how many?”

“Enough.” Came Kyubey’s soft, indifferent, reply.

“Then I wish to save them.” Said Jack, tightening his grip on his sister’s hand to stop her from interrupting. “I wish to protect them, not just my sister, all of them. All of the children you’ve done this to, all of the ones you might do it to in the future.”

“You think you can do it alone?” Kyubey was neither doubting Jack, nor laughing at him. It really was merely asking him.

“Maybe not.” He said. “But I’m making this wish and so I know I’m not the only one.”

Kyubey was silent once more.

“I’m right aren’t I?” Jack half laughed. “There are others, others out there protecting children from you. And I want to be one of them. I don’t care what it costs. I don’t care if I have to leave my sister. I don’t care if I’m not with her, or if I suffer. So long as she’s happy, so long as she lives. And so long as she never, ever meets you.”

She could feel it starting, the familiar tug of days reversing. But this time it was different. This time she could feel her brain working backwards too, working to erase all of this.

She tried desperately to cling on, to keep some of this with her, but bit by bit all of it faded. The last thing to go is the memory of Jack’s eyes as he looked up at her, as he knew he was saving her.

~

The cost of Jack’s wish had been his memories, and 300 years of desperate isolation. But a protector he had wished to become. A Guardian he turned into.  
He knew it wouldn’t be enough to save them all. But he had the others, and he saved the children he could, just as he had once saved his sister.

~

She was happy , eventually, once the grief of losing a brother so tragically subsided. She lived a long life, far longer than anyone else in her village, or the next, or the next.

She got married, had children, named one of them Jack. Then grandchildren.

And when she was a very, very old lady and it was time for her to go, a half forgotten memory, a dream of a dream, came back to her. Of her brother’s eyes amid the falling snow.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone from the kink meme knows the prompt that asked for a ROTG Madoka Magica crossover, where Jack dies in any case, please can you link me so I can post there? I can't find it anymore.


End file.
